


Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

by PeniG



Series: Akashic Records [22]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Breakfast, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Other, Post-Apocalypse, non-standard bodies, same missing scene everybody and Dog is doing, semi-sentient plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 09:22:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19292845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG
Summary: It's been a hard week. They need to recuperate before the next crisis.





	Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before I had any idea I'd be doing anything else; therefore, it needed moderate editing to fit neatly into the Akashic Records. The main incidents are all the same.

Aziriphale’s spotted-something-wonderful smile flashed, and he let go of Crowley's hand to signal the bus to stop. Crowley, as usual, saw nothing wonderful at all on the half-lit London street. “This isn’t even Mayfair,” he protested, slithering down the aisle in his angel’s bouncy wake. “And we don’t have _time_ to eat, we need to rest so the neurons can be fresh enough to -“

Aziriphale, gracing the driver with that bubbly smile Crowley was constantly working to get, skipped down to the curb in front of a corner grocery. “I know, but once we figure it out we’ll need something to fortify us and I _know_ what you’re like. You don’t have a thing in your flat, do you? For breakfast?”

“I have champagne. That’s breakfast enough for anybody.” The grocery’s bell clanged as they entered and the cashier looked up with the sullen wariness of a turbaned man who had been about to close after a terrible day when two overprivileged white men invaded his space; but Aziriphale treated him to The Smile, too, and he relaxed. Crowley tried not to resent it. “Or there’s that place downstairs, I suppose it’s open for breakfast. Can be, anyway. Wait, you don’t expect me to cook, do you? Because that is not happening.” He picked up one of the little baskets stacked by the register.

“No, don’t worry, I’ll do that.” Aziriphale bustled through the dingy aisles, which became marginally less dingy in his wake, the harsh light of the overhead lamps mellowing as it encountered him. It wasn't consciously miraculous, or his ordinary radiance, either; his radiance, if anything, seemed subdued. No, something was going on that he wasn't consciously controlling. Even Crowley's current state of cleanliness, he thought, had been an accidental side effect. Aziraphale, in his current state, was a brush absentmindedly freshening up the world. “Mrs. Lavender, you remember her?”

Possessive old grass widow, she’d been, never approved of Crowley, thought he was sponging, or worse, off “her” sweet Mr. Fell. “I never understood what you wanted with servants.”

“Standards of the day, my dear, and she needed employment so much! Anyway, when her daughter got injured driving the ambulance and married that shellshocked boy and Mrs. Lavender left to look after them she was worried about leaving me on my own, with help so hard to find, so she taught me to make what she called ‘a nice egg by the fire,’ and it was fun, so -“

”Oh. Oh, no. Fun means you’re no good at it.”

“I’m not as good as Mrs. Lavender, but I think I could manage eggs benedict with a little help -?” He turned That Look on Crowley, who returned one of his repertoire of impatient gestures. If Aziriphale wanted him to help get snails to make arabesque patterns in slime all over the front of the Houses of Parliament he’d do it, and they both knew it, but they’d needed these little rituals throughout the Arrangement: Aziriphale had to _hint_ and Crowley had to _acquiesce_ , and The Smile was his reward. Changes were coming between them, but not, apparently, to this, not yet, solid ground remained, and his angel Smiled.

So Crowley carried the basket while Aziriphale filled it up with what were apparently the ingredients for eggs benedict, and only the produce section (such as it was) let them down, Aziriphale shaking his head as he examined every orange and lemon in the place, and looking shocked when Crowley pointed to the refrigerator/freezer units, indicating the existence of bottled and frozen fruit juices.

Crowley swiped payment with a temporary bit of plastic (which would not only pay the grocer’s price but would set off a cascade of financial silly buggers greatly annoying to a certain person with more money than was good for anyone) while Aziriphale shook an immaculate cloth carrier bag from the air, and they caught a cab to Mayfair at the nearest stand, with Aziriphale lecturing animatedly on the fine points of shopping all the way to Obnoxious Tower Mark II.

He fell quiet in the elevator, though, his food-inspired spurt of adrenaline exhausted. Once in the flat Crowley pointed him to the bedroom and stocked the groceries in the nearly bare refrigerator, giving Aziriphale plenty of time to arrange things to suit himself and decide how this would work; but when he was done his angel was still standing, with the stillness of the axis on which the earth spun, in the bedroom doorway. Crowley felt sick. “I could make the bed bigger, if you like,” he said. “Or I can do my resting on the couch, I don’t -“

”Nonsense. That’s not what we need, and you know it.”

“Do I? _I_ didn’t think we needed breakfast, I can’t think at all anymore, I’m tired and so are you and they’ll be coming for us and we need to understand and we can’t do it with these brains in tatters and I’m glad you’re here but I‘m so _tired_ -“

”I don’t suppose you have such a thing as a nightshirt?”

“I have silk pajamas. Will they do?”

Aziriphale went straight to the correct drawer of the gleaming black dresser and drew out two pairs (Crowley normally owned one), passing one to him and shaking the other out into a pristine and seductively comfortable-looking white cotton nightshirt. In a trice Aziriphale’s clothes were laundered and neatly put away in the drawer and closet and Aziriphale was ready for bed, looking so much like the Guardian of the Eastern Gate that Crowley had to look down at the garments in his hands, realizing for the first time (perhaps it hadn’t been true before) that they were black in the way a starling is black, sheened with the shifting colors of broken light.

Crowley got a weird satisfaction out of hanging those of his clothes that weren’t variations on his own sloughable skin in the closet next to Aziriphale’s, to hang crooked and create just enough static for cling, but Aziriphale still stood by the bed. Was this an etiquette thing? Or did he need to be wheedled? Crowley cast himself down upon the black duvet, swept it back to reveal the black sheets, thumped the black pillows, and said: “ _C’mon_ , angel, we don’t know when they’re coming with this fire and you said yourself - we need this - I probably should make it a little bigger, I generally sprawl -“

”No, my dear, it’s not that,” said Aziriphale. “I’m sorry. I’m being selfish and it’ll make you uncomfortable, but I can’t help it -“

”You won’t make me uncomfortable! That’s what I do to you, remember? Just _lie down_. It’s not rocket surgery.”

“I know, I know, that’s not what I meant. I can’t, not just yet, not till I’ve apologized. You don’t have to forgive me, you don’t have to do anything, but we’re not, strictly speaking, an angel and a demon anymore. If we’ve chosen our own side, that means we’ve got choices and have about the same status as humans, doesn’t it? And humans, when they do something wrong, need to own up to it. I won’t be able to rest till I do. ”

Crowley realized he still had his glasses on, so he whipped them off and tossed them vaguely in the direction of the headboard. “What on earth do you think _you_ have to apologize to _me_ for? Good, evil, remember? Forgiveness, from you, to me, if it works at all it works in that direction.” And it had worked, but he wouldn’t think about that right now; how in the black pits of despair and the midst of turning him away yet again, his angel had forgiven him (because Crowley's "I'm unforgiveable" had rankled him for hours and he'd feared they were exchanging the last words they ever would) and the pits of despair had become less dark, less desperate, and a great deal more painful. “You’ve never wronged me. How could you?”

“By not trusting you. By hurting you over and over and over again even after I started trusting you. I’ve been suspicious and unkind, and manipulative for my own amusement -“

”I _like_ being manipulated! This, I hate. You have no idea.”

“Even after I started feeling the waves of love coming off of you -"

"Really? We're going back _that_ far?"

”-I assumed, without analysis, that since you were a demon, you were only capable of selfish love, and you were constantly tempting me to fall so I’d be with you.”

“I _wasn’t_!” Aziriphale in Hell? What a _terrible_ idea!

“I understand that now, but for so long, I underestimated you, so badly,  I was so scared of the implications. Time after time after time you kept faith with me and I kept hurting you and using you and neglecting you and and not being honest with you and -“

”Of course you did! You were protecting me! You've always been protecting me! I _knew_ that, I _know_ that, you’re a terrible liar! Anyway, I deserved all of it, so how can I even forgive you when I was never harmed?”

“Weren’t you? Or were you so used to a wounded existence that you hardly noticed new wounds? And why, exactly, do you think you deserved to be treated so? You’re Fallen! What more pain does anybody need? And yet I kept hurting you. I’ll strive to do better in future.”

Crowley threw a pillow at his head. Aziriphale caught it, and there it was, The Look. He might not be asking for forgiveness, but he wanted it, and little qualified as he felt to supply it, Crowley couldn’t deny him. “All right, all right, you’ve taken responsibility, very commendable, and I forgive you. Six millennia of trying to be good and sharing your favorite things with me and valuing my existence when I didn’t, and holding onto hope that the Apocalypse could be fixed when I was ready to give up and head for the stars, and breaking your _own_ heart trying to keep _me_ safe, I forgive _all_ of it. Now. Come. To. Bed.”

The Smile bloomed. “Thank you, my dear.”

Aziriphale climbed into bed as if he’d never been in a modern one before, which might be true. Sitting up next to beds watching over the one sleeping in it was much more his speed. But he lay down now with a will, drawing Crowley toward him and pulling the covers up over both of them. “And don’t you dare make the bed any bigger! This is exactly the right size. All you need to do now is curl up, and go to sleep.”

“Curl up. What a good idea. I hope I can. We have to figure out the prophesy in time -“

”We will.” Aziriphale slid one arm through the gap between Crowley’s neck and his shoulder, and the other over his torso. “She couldn’t have written the prophecy if we weren't going to.”

“Huh. That’s true.” Crowley flicked off the light without moving, without even a finger snap. He was too exhausted for posturing. “But - they could attack - now - tonight -“

Aziriphale wrapped a leg around Crowley’s hips, which melted under the weight, and Crowley curled. “They won’t. They’re as tired and confused and confounded as we are. More. It’ll be hours before either side -“

”Hell. It’ll be Hell. She said fire.”

“Heaven has fire too, remember? It’ll be hours before they’ve recovered enough to worry about avenging their frustration on us.” A wing arched over them both, tucking them into a feather cocoon. Crowley coiled, and coiled again. “Besides, they don’t have our resources.”

“Ressourcess? What resssourccesss? They’re Heaven, they’re Hell, they have armies, they -“

”They have no imagination. They have no prospect of breakfast.” Another arm wrapped Crowley, another leg fit itself into his coils. “Heaven doesn’t have you, and Hell doesn’t have me.” Another wing wrapped them, from below this time, mattress be damned, and Crowley, with those passionately kind eyes on him, relaxed all over.

“Promissssssse?”

“I promise. Do not be afraid,” whispered the Guardian of the Eastern Gate, pressing his forehead against the smooth scales of the Serpent’s forehead. The Serpent’s flat chin rested on the angel’s bosom, as pair after pair of watchful eyes opened wherever they needed to open to cover all approaches, including the odd non-Euclidian ones that some of the angels, Fallen and Un, could use and these two could not. More wings came out, sheltering the great coils from every possible side, so Crowley could sleep while Aziriphale watched over him.

He dreamed of nebulae, as he often did, the best kind of nebula dream, because not only was he on the design team, the build team understood what he was trying to do. Both Adams, Eve, the book woman and the woman who’d given Aziriphale a lift in her body, that carpenter lad, hordes of laughing kids on bikes wheeling among the brilliant clouds of gas, Mozart and Freddy Mercury drinking Aziriphale’s best scotch while putting together the sound track, Aziriphale himself nailing down all the reference points and double checking things so that the stars and the gasses and the traffic continually sang: _Freedom and Love and Harmony and Forgiveness_ in a vast Sigil of Happiness, made from overlapping sigils with different meanings depending on from which quarter of the heavens they were viewed.

As the sun came up Crowley withdrew the scales from his eyes. He didn’t want to wake yet, and if he had been a human he would not have been able to, but this was the best sleep he’d had since the Fall, and the necessary penny had dropped in his refreshed brain. The nebulae cohered into Aziriphale’s face, and Crowley said: “Remember in Paris? That weird bit - when you were me and I was you?"

"We'd possessed each other. By accident."

"Right. Choosing our faces. We need to swap.”

“Exactly,” said Aziriphale, wings and other limbs retreating, spare eyes putting themselves away. “So whoever comes for us, whatever they try to do -“

”They’ll be doing the wrong thing to the wrong one -“ Crowley stretched his coils into the requisite shapes, ignoring the usual hopeless protest from the pelvis.

“And they’ll be taken by surprise - “ Limb by limb by limb, Aziriphale released his vigilance.

“Which they won’t be able to deal with because neither side has an imagination and they never can!” Crowley sat up in his iridescent pajamas, started to retrieve his dark glasses from the headboard, and thought better of it. “The sooner the better. They could be after us any moment, now.” But now that he had a rudimentary plan, his synapses were all in working order, and Aziriphale’s smile was bubbling to the surface, he wasn’t afraid. They didn’t have to fight Heaven or Hell, only fool them, only get them to back off and let the two of them alone; and one way or another, they’d been tricking Hell and Heaven for millennia.

Aziriphale took Crowley’s hand. “You’re right. We must be prepared. But I’m certain we’ll have time for breakfast.”

The swap was easier than anticipated, no hint of explosion even when they each mixed half-and-half in each body, but distinctly odd. Not like last time, when it had been an accident in the middle of an experiment on combining physical with spiritual intimacy, during that glorious day and night of freedom on Aziraphale's boat. Doing it deliberately, making it last, was work, but work they could do together with the seamless ease of long association, like a share working, focused inward rather than outward. Crowley spent the first five minutes getting used to seeing color again and figuring out a good rhythm for blinking. Aziriphale, breakfast on his mind, tried to get up first, and promptly fell out of bed, unable to make the legs work together at all till Crowley stopped laughing and gave him advice. Aziriphale himself kept collapsing into giggles, which didn’t help, but eventually he managed to do a turn around the room without falling over. “From here it’s only practice,” he said. “How about you, my dear? Are you comfortable?”

“Very, said Crowley, patting Aziriphale’s sides through the nightshirt (airy and light as he had never imagined clothing could be). “There’s so much structure! I feel solid as the Bank of England. Solider.”

Aziriphale paused with Crowley’s hand on the doorknob. “It’s not too, too soft, do you think?”

“Certainly not! It’s cozy.” Crowley, embarrassed at the nakedness and overresponsiveness of the facial muscles, feared he was horribly distorting the angel’s features. “Why would you think such a thing?”

“Oh, I just wondered, but if you’re comfortable that’s all that matters.” Aziriphale opened the bedroom door upon a jungle instead of the hall, and gasped in delight, a first for the mouth he was using. “Oh! You didn’t tell me you had orange and lemon trees!”

“I don’t,” said Crowley, rising at last, clumsy in the excessive stability of Aziriphale’s body, to stare with Aziriphale’s eyes at his own hands plucking vibrant oranges and lemons from plants that had burst through the door of the plant room and crowded the hall. “That’s a rubber plant. And a ficus.” _And they were green, and orange, and yellow, and Aziraphale in Crowley's body had red hair, he would drown in all this color!_

“Such a lovely surprise! And I didn’t even notice you doing it, you sly boots!” Aziriphale held a lemon to Crowley’s nose, prompting a reflex that Crowley had long ago learned to control, and Crowley’s tongue darted out, causing Aziriphale to laugh again. “My goodness, I can smell them with your tongue! I had no idea you experienced the world like this! It’s all so wonderful! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Arms filled with fruit, he skip-sidled through the leaves toward the kitchen, leaving Crowley gawping at his plants.

When he stepped toward them, they retreated, the perfect lemons and oranges overripening in their rush to seem more perfect. His plants, at least, had no difficulty distinguishing between the master they feared and the being whose protection they had sought to propitiate during the night. _Oh_ , he thought, feeling suckerpunched and enlightened at the same time. _Oh_. “All right, all right, you lot, well grown,” he growled, as well as he could with this mouth. “Don’t drop any of that on the floor.” He retreated into the bedroom, and by the time he’d gotten Aziriphale’s clothes to hang properly on Aziriphale’s body they’d made a green and citrusy tunnel for him to go see how Aziriphale was managing in the kitchen.

Breakfast turned into an hilarious affair, between Aziriphale’s difficulty getting fine control of Crowley’s body, and Crowley’s complete ignorance of cooking. Every task had its near-disaster, squeezing juice and whisking Hollandaise and poaching eggs and toasting muffins and frying bacon, and yet somehow they all came together into two far from perfect dishes of eggs benedict, two almost perfect cups of tea, and two fresh pulpy glasses of orange juice with a splash of champagne, all of which, in the interests character immersion, Aziriphale tried to gulp and Crowley tried to savor, despite the fact that the body was hungry by then, hungrier than Crowley could ever remember his own body being. They laughed at every misstep and crowed at every success, and Crowley for one was astonished to see how beautiful the body he’d lived in and fussed over and tried to keep in style could be, acting as vessel for all the love in the world.

But eventually it was all eaten and the dishes had all done themselves and put themselves away, and it was time to move Aziriphale from the pajamas to the day clothes and teach him to maintain the bits that were made from the body in harmony with the bits made by tailors. “Be careful of this,” Crowley admonished him, taking the jacket off the hanger. “It’s brand new.”

“Of course, my dear,” said Aziriphale, wiggling into it, then returned to trying out various movements in the jeans. “Excuse me, but _what_ is this business in the front here?”

“Oh, a little adjustment I started making once codpieces went out. The thing is, if the clothes are tight, and that area’s too flat, people who would swear up and down they never looked at it get uncomfortable. I don’t mind making people uncomfortable -“

”Perish the thought!”

“But I want to control when it happens, so -“

”And flatness would spoil the line of the trousers, I quite see that. Wouldn’t it be simpler to grow something and then ungrow it when you wanted to make people uncomfortable instead of altering the clothes, though? Like you do with your hair and your shoes?”

“That...would be simpler, now you mention it." _But simpler isn't easier, when there's a do-not-cross line, when I'm around you. Is there a do-not-cross line? When do we make the new rules?_ "I’ll experiment with that - later. Don’t you go playing silly buggers with that body, just because it’s a bit more malleable than yours, not till after whatever’s going to happen, happens!”

“Oh, certainly not! We need to stay recognizably in character till after they make their move, whoever they are.”

They would be Hell. Heaven dealt in sharply worded notes. Crowley felt a moment of breathless panic at the thought of Aziriphale facing Hell for him and fought it down. “We need to behave as if we suspect nothing,” he said. “Do everything exactly as we would do it, if we weren’t on our guard.”

And there it was - the end of hilarity for the morning, down to business. Aziriphale held Crowley’s body stiller and straighter than he had ever been able to hold it himself,  pulled his radiance in so tight it was invisible, fiddled with the tie, and said: “You’re right, of course. How would you be spending the day, if we weren’t trying to forestall Wrath?”

“I’d still be asleep. I never show my face out of doors till after ten, even if I haven’t been sleeping. Plants, some music, maybe a little Bentley shopping online, catch up on the news, see what the fallout from yesterday is. And you -“

”I’d need to go to the bookshop.”

“It’s not -“

”Not there anymore, yes, I can keep track of that now. But I still own it. A property owner has responsibilities, you know, can’t just shrug off a burned-down historic building. I’ve got to inspect the damage, submit insurance claims, probably show myself to the authorities to demonstrate I didn’t die in the conflagration, certainly cooperate with an arson investigation. And now that’s all on you, I’m afraid.”

It sounded deadly dull, especially if the hounds of Hell came here to savage Aziriphale while Crowley was doing it. “And you’d want to get on it early.”

“Yes. While you were still asleep. I want to know the worst, and if we weren’t on our guard, I wouldn’t be guarding you.”

“I’d better head out, then. How's my aura?"

"Buried deep. I can only see it when I, I look closely."

"Don’t look so guilty, angel, you’re not kicking me out of my flat! We have roles to play, that’s all. Besides, whoever comes won’t come nearly so hard for one of us as they would for both, and if we want to get it over with we need to give them their chances. It’s not as if we don’t have each other’s backs.”

“Yes, that’s true. But we should meet early this afternoon. Because if, if I went to the bookstore alone, and saw the wreckage, and dealt with the authorities - well. I’d want to see you. Afterward. As soon as possible. And eat something.”

“Ice cream cart around 1:00, then?”

“Second alternate rendezvous.” The Smile looked odd on Crowley’s face, the snake eyes mysteriously lighting up.

“All right. See you then.” He’d better.

“See you.”

They brushed shoulders as Crowley walked Aziriphale’s body past his own; and Aziriphale poked him in between the shoulder blades. “Stand up straight, my dear. I should make you practice with a book on your head.”

He _was_ standing straight - wasn’t he? “ _You_ can’t make _me_ do anything,” said Crowley, Aziriphale’s mouth getting tangled up between a sneer and a smile and possibly committing a smirk. _“I’m_ the one with the puppy dog eyes now, and I’m not afraid to use them!”

Aziriphale’s laugh followed him to the elevator, and he was glad his neighbors were all asleep, for such a sound had never emanated from his flat before. He took the back way out, to avoid seeing the empty no-parking space where the Bentley should be, and hoped Agnes knew what she was talking about, post-Apocalypse. Because if Hell came for his angel, and the ruse didn’t work, and Crowley didn’t reach him in time - well, what would have been the use of Adam’s saving the world?

 *

Aziriphale watched Crowley carrying his body off to the taxi stand from the window in the plant room, and breathed a sigh of relief when the taxi bore him away. Not that Crowley’s rescue instincts would ever let him be completely safe, but Aziriphale, with the finesse he’d developed through centuries of manipulating their ability to sense each other and their capacity to cloak themselves to do each other's jobs, could ensure that by the time he arrived, this time, everything would be over one way or another. Crowley had no need to know how many dodgy situations he’d avoided because Aziriphale was a little more alert, a little better at foreseeing consequences in time for a subtle deflection to prevent a danger to Crowley arising at all; but the skills he’d learned doing that might yet protect his demon one more time. And he had no miracle budget, anymore. He didn't know what Adam had done, or how he had done it, but his personal reserve brimmed over, the geas Sandalphon had laid on him against protecting himself was gone as if it had never been, and all the power of Earth buzzed against his palms, ready to be used. If he could only remain calm, prevent the stuttering panic that locked down his brain during confrontations, he had nothing - nearly nothing - to fear from Hell.

Because of course it would be Hell who came. Heaven’s top angels were disgusted with Aziriphale, but they had nothing to gain from persecuting him now, not even discipline. Yes, his platoon had seen him throw away his uniform and dive back to earth, refusing to fight; but exile and rumors of his Fall would satisfy the troops. Heaven didn’t want him. Never had, not really. Even Gabriel had wanted some simulacrum of Aziraphale, some symbol or other he'd been conflated with in the archangel's mind. Only a handful of senior staff knew that an angel had stood with a demon and the anti-Christ and some human children in the path of the Great Plan. All they had to do to avoid embarrassment was leave him out of whatever explanation they made - _if_ they explained anything.

He and Crowley’d known for donkey’s years that, if Heaven and Hell found out about the Arrangement, Aziriphale’s people would punish him, but Crowley’s people would destroy him utterly - something they couldn’t do to an angel, as long as they didn’t know he was an angel and trot out the hellfire. The main thing to do would be to persuade them that the game wasn’t worth the candle, that Crowley was best left alone in future; and the sooner that happened, the better.

But he couldn’t control the timing, so best to keep busy. Aziriphale turned away from the window to beam at the thronging plants. How much they understood of the situation he couldn’t tell, but if, as it appeared, these plants were semi-sentient, it stood to reason that if he remained calm they would not fear for their beloved caretaker. He’d had no idea Crowley was so good with plants! No doubt he had lots of other lovely surprises in store, now that they weren't restricting themselves to technically public spaces like the bookshop.

“Now, my beauties,” Aziriphale said, smiling at them with Crowley’s mouth and hoping the result was as precious and reassuring as the real thing. “Let’s harvest the rest of this fruit, and then you can return to your normal occasions. I’m afraid I don’t know much about plant care, but you’ll help me, won’t you? It’s clear he loves the lot of you tremendously, and I don’t want him to be cross with me if I don’t treat you all right!”

-30-


End file.
